Mazecraft (iOs) Preview

Puzzle fans and epic builders alike will soon have a new digital playground in the form of Mazecraft, an upcoming game from Hyper Liger. It combines a love of building and setting traps with the curious addictiveness of trying to figure out tricky little puzzles into one awesome little game.

Mazecraft begins, as many games do, by allowing the player to customize and name their character. Your little guy is a rather pixely sort, but cute nonetheless, and you can deck him out with a small assortment of heads and bodies to your liking. As you advance in the game, you’ll be able to unlock more customizations if you like. The tutorial of the game walks you through the basic idea behind everything else you’ll be doing in the game. You’ll need to guide your character through a short maze, collecting coins and items and (hopefully) avoiding bad guys and traps along the way. The puzzles, like your character, have a look reminiscent of Minecraft, which adds to the charm of such things as hopping bunnies or charging minotaurs.

This first maze is pretty simple, and the tutorial guides you through what to do, but it does a good job of giving you the basics of how the other levels in the game will play out. You start on a block aptly labelled “start”, and work your way to the one labelled “finish”. The maze has various items to pick up, but you can technically skip those if you find it a quicker way to the finish. However, it’s in your best interest to pick up as many coins and items as you are able, as you’ll be needing them later on. Your character moves along as your finger drags across the touch screen of your device, and this movement is the only action you’ll be providing. Your character can’t jump, or duck, or pick up, or anything else unless a device in the maze allows him to do so.

So that’s pretty much it for the playing – you go through the maze, hopefully solve it, and then you get to keep the items you picked up in it. That on its own is rather diverting, but the real fun in the game comes from its levels – which are created by the other players. That’s where you really see creativity come alive, because instead one group of like minded people creating all of the levels, you have countless other players, all with their own diabolical tricks to throw at you. It’s a bit reminiscent of littlebigplanet’s user created levels, and that’s a good thing.

So all those coins you picked up in the tutorial, and hopefully after solving a few of the user levels? Creating levels is where they come into play. To create your own maze, you’ll choose a theme, and then go to town creating your maze. As you start, all of the blocks of the maze are filled in, and you simply tap to create a path that players can go through to get from start to finish. Of course, the fun is in the extras, and there’s no shortage of them in Mazecraft. You can use your coins to purchase all sorts of things for your maze, from doors that open by remote lever, to hidden traps, to bad guys and sawblades who’ll turn the player to mincemeat at a single wrong move.

There are also plenty of goodies to add to the maze. You can place treasure chests for the other players to uncover, there are springs to send them bouncing over blocks, and you can even add in doors that will only open when the player gives the correct answer to your riddle. And no worries about trolls creating levels that are impossible to pass. The game requires you to prove that your maze can be solved before it allows you to publish it. Whether you’re handing out loads of treasure, or giving your best evil laugh while adding yet another trap, each element that you add to your maze has a cost. Since you have to “pay” for creating levels (and the more complicated they are, the more you must pay), it keeps players both playing and creating, as you’ll need to add to your coin stash to make the very best levels.

It’s all loads of fun, and gives you plenty of opportunity to let your personality (and diabolical ways) shine to the other players. And that’s a good thing, because Mazecraft is a very social game. You can follow your favorite maze builders, and it’s easy to connect to your social network of choice. But the biggest thing that really gets you involved is the tipping system. Once you have completed another player’s maze, you are given the opportunity to rate and tip. You can rate their maze anywhere from zero to five stars, with each star being equal to one coin. So if you rate a maze five stars, it’s creator will get a five coin tip. It’s pretty clever, and the ratings are easily visible on each maze, which helps you weed out which ones are worth your time.

Mazecraft is one of those games that just keeps you coming back for more. Whether you just have the best idea for a tricky new maze, or you want to try your hand at mastering the hardest levels, it keeps you engaged. While the drag to walk mechanic isn’t always as precise as I would like, for the most part everything in the game works just like it’s supposed to, making the challenge more about figuring out the puzzle than quick reflexes (although those certainly don’t hurt). The user created levels mean there’s always something new to play, giving you the chance to pick up more coins and create some more levels of your own. It’s loads of fun, and well worth a play.